Music for solo violin is still mainly associated with Bach in the
eighteenth century and Paganini in the nineteenth. Carolin Widmann, the
distinguished German violinist, here provides a varied and vivid survey of
such music from the twentieth century, from Ysaÿe in the 1920s to Jörg
Widmann (her composer brother) at the turn of the millennium. There is
nothing at all in the CD booklet about any of these pieces, though they are
unlikely to be at all familiar to most collectors. I describe them below,
partly because you need this information for a proper appreciation of the
range of what is on offer on this disc, and partly in hope that it might
pique your curiosity.

Ysaÿe’s Six sonatas for solo violin, Op. 27, were written in
1923. Each one is dedicated to one of his contemporary violinists, No. 2 to
Jacques Thibaud, and No. 4 to Fritz Kreisler. If that was a shrewd way to
encourage world-class performances, one hopes it worked, for they are fine
works and by no means unworthy of their Bachian inheritance. Indeed No. 2
actually opens with some Bach, the famously arresting first phrase of the E
minor partita, no less. However, it is the plainchant Dies Irae
that informs much of the work, including the noble variations of the
Sarabande. Sonata No. 4 is hardly less compelling, and both are very well
played indeed.

If those sonatas are a homage to Bach, then another set of six, the
Sei Capricci (1976) of Salvatore Sciarrino, pay homage to the 24
Caprices of his compatriot and forbear Niccolo Paganini. Each
capriccio uses almost entirely the least substantial of all string
sounds - harmonics. This includes some harmonics that – apparently – do not
exist, since they do not lie on any of the nodes along the string that
produce the overtones. They are notated and attempted nonetheless, and the
sonic result is part of the soundscape. This near exclusive use of harmonics
– normally an occasional coloristic effect – means every piece is filled
with ethereal, whistling wisps of sound, evoking a world of shadows, as if
some revenant from the great days of Ysaÿe and his dedicatees was playing
for us, but his spectral status meant he could produce only a disembodied
sound. Eerie it might be, but Widmann’s performance again makes us forget
the incredible technical demands this music must make on the performer.

Pierre Boulez’s Anthèmes was commissioned for the 1991 Yehudi
Menuhin Violin Competition. The title is a hybrid of the French
thèmes (themes) and the English "anthem". The four pages
of score (free to download) employ a formidable-looking range of tempi
(lent to rapide), expression marks (calme, agité,
brusque), dynamics (pppp -fff) and very frequent
metrical changes, all punctuated by frequent long trills and glissandi.
Widmann manages to observe all this scrupulously, and in so doing, show us
that it is a fine piece, by no means as challenging to listen to as it must
be to play. Small wonder it is one of those pieces Boulez - as so often -
expanded and developed further, as Anthèmes 2 for violin and live
electronics.

Jörg Widmann's solo violin Études I-III are autonomous
concert pieces — premiered separately in 1995, 2001 and 2003. The composer
wrote of them: “‘Étude' is taken literally here as a
compositional exercise … but also as a violinistic study on a certain
playing technique: for example, I is some sort of 'sounding
out' of the instrument's resonance possibilities, II
goes on a journey from a three-part chorale to spirited, unbridled
virtuosity, and III is mainly a left-hand étude.'
He, perhaps mischievously, does not remark on the element that will strike
most listeners to Etude II – one line of the three-part chorale he
mentions is for the violinist’s wordless voice. One would like to
know what Isabelle Faust — dedicatee and first performer — made of that when
she first encountered it, let alone its first audience at the 1995
Cheltenham Festival. The effect is certainly evocative here. Presumably we
can take for granted the authenticity of the performance by the composer’s
sister and dedicatee and first performer of Étude III, who even
contributed the recommended fingering to the score. By the way, Schott’s
website has this helpful note for prospective purchasers of the score
“Difficulty: Very Difficult”. The only possible criticism
of the performer on this CD is that she never makes it sound like that.

Ysaÿe once wrote that a performer on his instrument "must be a
violinist, a thinker, a poet, a human being, he must have known hope, love,
passion and despair, he must have run the gamut of the emotions in order to
express them all in his playing." I have no idea if Carolin Widmann has
experienced all that in her life to date, but surely Ysaÿe would have
applauded such virtuosity and expressive range – the playing is often
frankly sensational. This recording was first published in 2006 on Telos,
and won an award in Germany. It was Widmann’s debut disc, and as a solo
violin calling card from a young player it recalls Perlman’s EMI Paganini
Caprices from 1972. Its reissue is greatly to be celebrated.